Will Trump invite York County Muslims, Mexican immigrants to Rock Hill speech Friday?

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump speaks in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Dec. 29, 2015. Despite a year of campaigning, 10 televised debates and millions of dollars in advertising, most people in even the earliest voting presidential voting states are just now beginning to focus on their choices in the 2016 campaign.
Nati Harnik
AP

ROCK HILL

Friday the Winthrop Coliseum will be rocking. No basketball, but lots of hair. Donald Trump, who has single-highhandedly turned the most boring presidential campaign in American history into a daily thrill – if you are not Muslim or an immigrant from Mexico or poor – will appear before cheering thousands at Rock Hill’s coliseum.

Will any of those people there be Muslims? Or immigrants from Mexico or other Spanish speaking countries? Or just plain people whose Muslim and Hispanic roots are as deep or deeper in America as Trump’s?

Trump has made it clear. He wants a wall as tall as the Grand Canyon is deep to keep Mexican immigrants out of America. The door back in – after 15 million are deported – will be the size of a coffin and open when he says so.

He wants a ban on Muslim travel and immigration to the United States – a country born to ensure religious freedom for all.

It is doubtful that any Muslims will be among them or even invited, said Sayeed Ramadan Shakir, the American born, York-County-educated leader of Holy Islamville in York County. Islamville is where people, Americans, Muslims, live in a rural area. It is a place visited by Rep. Mick Mulvaney who has been far more conservative for far longer than Donald Trump. Mulvaney visited Holy Islamville just a few weeks ago because some people claim Islamville has terrorists running all over the place.

It is a place conservative York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant, who is far more conservative than Donald Trump, has said there are no terrorists. Bryant took Mulvaney to visit Holy Islamville.

Mulvaney and Bryant found smiles, joy, prayer, and war veterans who fought for America and one who earned a Purple Heart for battle wounds.

At the Rock Hill mosque, where people from dozens of countries pray, there will be services Friday on Islam’s holy day. Those people, if you listen to Trump, should be kept out of America, or watched if here.

The mosque’s executive director, James “Jumah” Moore, was born in Rock Hill more than six decades ago. He is as American as Donald Trump.

For some, his religion makes him a suspect.

“I don’t think I will be asked to go Friday,” Moore said.

The math professor at York Technical College the past 20 years, someone like him can’t come to America if Trump is president? The dry cleaner who has run a shop on Rock Hill’s Herlong Avenue for decades, but comes from Africa, none like him allowed if Trump is president?

No.

How about those students at Winthrop – where Trump will speak – who are Muslims from so many Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries? People like them wouldn’t be allowed into America or Winthrop if Trump is president.

Will they be invited to attend the event Friday at their own university?

Trump might get to the coliseum by way of Cherry Road. If the smoked glass on his limousine is not too dark to see through, he could see the house painted with anti-Trump graffiti by its owner, James Porter.

Porter is not waiting for his invite either.

York County has more than 20,000 Hispanic immigrants. Are some of those immigrants here illegally? No question they are.

Their crime is working for minimum wage scrubbing the toilets at Rock Hills motels and restaurants and cutting grass and trees to try and have a better life for themselves and their kids. Trump calls these people, who work 60 hours a week in a country where so many despise them, criminals. Trump will pass the Hispanic stores run by immigrants as he heads south past that house that has the graffiti.

He will walk onto the stage and thousands who are not Hispanic and not Muslim will cheer. Donald Trump is never boring. He bows to no one.

Make America Great Again is his slogan.

America is about one thing – freedom – seems pretty great to the people at the panaderia and the mosque and at Islamville, too.

York County, South Carolina police officers who were shot and wounded in an ambush in January, met with the Winthrop University mens’ basketball team before their game with Longwood and were honored during First Responders Day.